what's the highest tennis level that you can achieve at the recreational level in today's video
i want to give you the answer but before i give you the answer i want to tell you
a quick little story about something that happens quite frequently when i train my players in person
so this one particular student of mine who was a female who had been taking lessons with me for a
couple of years was a very talented player and she had learned quite fast now important distinction
with what i'm going to explain to you today is this student's age she was in her early 30s and
she had watched some wta professional matches the day before and she came on the court and asked me
nick what can i do to play like serena i really love the way she plays i want to play like her
and i said okay listen it's uh never good to try to copy players but all the professional players
have fundamentals that you should try to adapt blah blah blah and she interrupted me and said
no no no nick i mean i want to play against serena i want to play at that pro level now this is not
the first time that one of my students had asked me this and i get very insulted when i hear this
question i feel sorry for my students because i always react in a very rude way so this morning i
was a little bit on my grumpy side and i gave the following response to my student i told her listen
there is a way where you can play against serena here's what you got to do you got to get into a
time machine and go back to the time when you were five years old and for the next 15 years
you got to train six hours a day and only then will you have a one percent chance to play on a
court against serena now after i gave her this answer she looked at me a little bit perplexed
and then i felt bad and i lightened the mood with a couple of jokes and everything was fine but the
reason why i get personally insulted when players ask me this is because i know how much work
goes into becoming a high-level player and some people have the audacity to think that they can do
this in a couple of years starting late in life and in a couple years they can be good enough
to play at a high level for example or even worse some recreational players think they can play
at the elite level and this is to me insulting because i'm a high level player i invested my
entire life into playing tennis and this is something that just can't be made up later on
in life now to explain what is the case i'm gonna use an iphone so i happen to have a daughter who
is 14 years old and i also have a mom who is 70. they both have iphones and the way they
use them is completely different so my daughter grew up with an iphone when she was very young
but she had a tablet she had an iphone so she learned how to operate this thing at a very
young age and she uses it with lightning speed i'm sure if you have kids if you see the way your kids
are operating an iphone it's unbelievable the way they type how fast and the way they switch
between apps and they can do things on the iphone that we can only dream of now i on the other hand
got my first iphone in my early 30s and i'm pretty good at it because i've had some good practice and
i could do things pretty quick on the iphone but my daughter laughs at me because she is so much
better so much faster than i am on the other hand my mom who got her first iphone at the age of 60
is unbelievably slow when she uses it the way she types and the way she switches between apps
is very cumbersome it's much much slower compared to the way i use my iphone now the point i'm
trying to make is super simple because my daughter learned how to use the iphone intuitively nobody
really taught her how to use it she figured it out on her own and she learned it as a kid and when
kids learn a motor skill they learn it in a more intuitive way and therefore master that specific
motor skill at a much higher and a much faster level i on the other hand learned how to operate
an iphone in my early 30s and while i'm pretty good at it i'm nowhere near my daughter when it
comes to speed and accuracy while using the iphone on the other hand my mom started learning how to
use an iphone at the age of 60 and she is nowhere near my speed and my accuracy at using the iphone
when you learn tennis as a kid you're gonna learn it in a much more intuitive way but it's not only
that the way your motor skills are going to be developed when you learn tennis at a younger age
is that you're going to be performing the tasks that are necessary to play tennis much faster
and more accurate that someone that learned tennis later in life now the later you go in age
the more difficult it becomes to learn tennis so the answer to the title of this video which
is the question what is the highest level that you can achieve as a recreational tennis player
it is the 5.0 level now some people are confused with ntrp ratings and these levels can differ
from where in the united states you live and some of my audience doesn't live in the united
states so let's leave the ntrp aside it's too confusing let's just say if you started tennis
later in life the chances of you becoming a high level player are slim to none so let me first
define what a high level tennis player is that is someone who is a competitive tennis player who
maybe had success in juniors was nationally ranked or had a successful college career or maybe played
prize money tournaments and did quite well maybe made some money or played on the futures tour
that is a high level tennis player the reason why you can't become a high level tennis player
if you started playing tennis later in life is the same reason why i can't use my iphone as fast
as my daughter there's absolutely nothing i can do i could sit there and practice using my iphone
10 hours a day it wouldn't matter i still wouldn't be able to use it as fast as she does and the same
is true for tennis it doesn't matter how much practice you put in it doesn't matter how hard
you work a tennis you will never be able to play high level tennis like i do and i'm not trying
to be mean i'm not trying to be a dream crusher i'm just being a realist when tennis is learned
at a young age it is learned much differently let's not even talk about playing matches and
playing tournaments the amount of confidence you collect you figure out how to play the actual
game it's not all about motor skills tennis is mental as well and is a big part of the game
and when all that is learned at a young age it gets developed in a more intuitive way
in a much quicker way where players are really not thinking about much when they're playing tennis
they play tennis very intuitively so for that reason you can't become a high-level tennis player
but even having that idea by itself is a very dangerous thing because i've made many videos
about goal setting if you watch my mindset for tennis video i explain in great detail what
can happen to you or even if you're a young junior you're dreaming about becoming pro
what can happen when you have dreams that are unrealistic it can crush you mentally and you
might stop playing tennis all together so when it comes to goals for my players i'm quite ambitious
actually i want all my recreational players to become 5 0's that is the highest recreational
level that you can achieve and guys it is really hard to get to the 5.0 level have you ever seen
a real 5.0 players they're really good actually if you look at them some look like they could even
play at the high level so what you got to do when it comes to goal setting in tennis you got to go
step by step if you're a 2.5 your goal should be to become a 3.0 if you're a 3.0 your goal should
be to become a 3.5 and so on do not dream about playing at the high level do not ask me if you
can play a match with me i'm not going to do it because it is a waste of my time and quite frankly
it is insulting for the reasons that i explained in this video set your goals step by step forget
about playing pro or playing at the high level and realize that it's actually very hard to
achieve the highest recreational level that you should be striving for and that is the 5.0 level